Tag: Ginkgo biloba

Ginkgos have a lot going for them: ornamental appeal in the landscape, a decent resistance to pests and disease, and a history of existence that spans back over 200 million years.

You can learn more about the history of these trees and how best to cultivate them in our guide to growing Ginkgo biloba.

These aren’t the thirstiest of plants, as they do tolerate some drought once established.

However, optimal irrigation is definitely one difference between a good ginkgo and a great one. But how to water it the right way? That’s what we’ll cover in this guide.

Here’s what we’ll be talking about:

The Importance of Proper Irrigation

It goes without saying that plants need enough water, but it’s fun to know why.

Chemically, the vast majority of a plant is water. So as you can imagine, moisture is vital for all kinds of plant processes.

At the cellular level, cells need water to elongate, divide, and sustain themselves.

Plus, it is a key ingredient in photosynthesis, the energy-producing process that plants use to make glucose and oxygen from carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight.

After roots absorb moisture and nutrients from the soil, nutrients travel via transpiration up to the shoots. Without water, this nutrient transport can’t happen.

In addition, plants suffering from too much sun and high temperatures use water at an increased rate to stay cool.

Without adequate moisture, overheated specimens develop scorched, crispy leaves, and may eventually die.

Plant cells contain large, fluid-filled sacs which contain water and other liquids. When full, these vacuoles provide structural stability, kinda like inflatable building blocks.

It’s not like the trunk itself will sag and flop over without enough water, but the foliage definitely will.

And a tree with droopy leaves – that aren’t supposed to be, anyway – is definitely unattractive.

When to Water

This guide will discuss watering specimens that you’ve already got growing in your landscape.

If you’ve got seedlings or transplants that aren’t established yet, you’ll need to keep the soil around the roots evenly moist. At all times. You want the soil to feel like a well-wrung-out sponge, not waterlogged and not dry, either.

You’ll know that your tree is established once it starts putting out new growth at a consistent, steady rate – comparing pictures or your mental snapshots can help you identify when this occurs.

For established specimens, a more moderate amount of water is ideal.

These trees do best when they receive irrigation whenever the top three to six inches of the soil is dry. This keeps the soil mostly moist while eliminating the risk of oversaturating it.

The best time of day for watering is in the early morning, before the sun has significantly risen in the sky.

This supplies the trees with enough moisture to make it through the day’s heat, allows for the water to percolate through the soil and reach the roots before it evaporates, and gives any surface moisture time to evaporate before nightfall.

Why is nighttime moisture less-than-awesome? Well, damp surfaces are prime spots for harmful microorganisms like fungi to grow and develop.

Add the nighttime humidity of a summer night – I’m looking at you, Missouri – and you could end up with a gnarly disease-causing pathogen or two.

Be sure to pay attention to your local weather forecasts and coordinate your waterings accordingly. No use irrigating your landscape when a rainstorm is an hour away, y’know?

Cease watering by your area’s first fall frost date or whenever air and soil temperatures are consistently below 40°F, whichever occurs first.

After the final frost of spring or whenever temperatures are consistently above 40°F again, resume your watering.

How to Water

A ginkgo has a much larger root system than your typical herbaceous perennials do – its roots can span two to three times the width of its already wide canopy!

You should water the roots from at least six inches away from the trunk all the way out to the “drip line” of the tree, i.e. the widest-spanning ends of the branches. Or even several feet beyond the drip line, if you can.

To irrigate your tree optimally, you’ve got a couple of options.

First, you can use a long soaker hose to cover the area of soil that you’ll be irrigating, setting it in a spiral pattern. Once you turn the hose on, it’ll provide a pretty even coverage of water over your intended area.

You’ll need to leave the hose going until the moisture has percolated down at least 12 inches – you can check this with a soil moisture meter or any long, thin bit of metal such as a tent stake. This may take an hour or longer, if you have a large specimen and the ground is very dry.

Alternatively, you can use a hose and irrigate your trees by hand, or perhaps leave it in place on the ground and move it around as needed.

A slow, even flow of water is much better than blasting the ground and potentially disrupting the soil surface, so be gentle with your irrigation. A sprinkler attachment where you can switch to the “shower” or “soaker” setting may be helpful for you, too.

Deep and infrequent watering is much better than providing shallow-soaking sips more often.

If you aren’t familiar with how to grow and care for ginkgo trees, read our guide.

Here are the topics we’ll cover to help you start new ginkgo trees from cuttings:

Ginkgo trees are dioecious, which means there are separate male and female specimens.

To reproduce in the wild, pollen from a male ginkgo tree needs to pollinate the flowers on the female to produce seeds.

The yellow pollen cones are visited by pollinators or the pollen is carried by the wind to the ovule on the female ginkgo trees.

From there, a fruit forms that is either carried by wildlife or falls to the ground and the seeds inside germinate.

The problem with leaving things up to nature like this is that we can’t control the outcome. Ginkgos started from seed may be either male or female and you won’t know which you are growing until the tree matures.

Most gardeners prefer to grow the male ginkgos because unlike the females, they don’t make quite such a mess. The best way to ensure that you propagate a male plant is via cuttings.

You can learn more about the difference between male and female ginkgos in our guide.

Or if you really love a particular tree for its shape, if you were to propagate from seed, you couldn’t be sure that the result would look anything like the parent.

But if you propagate via stem cuttings, the new ginkgo tree will be a genetic replica of the parent.

When to Propagate Ginkgo Cuttings

The most successful cuttings are those taken from semi-soft (semi-ripe) wood, which means you need to work in the spring or midsummer at the latest.

As the spring wood matures, it hardens, and while it’s technically possible to take hardwood cuttings, these are much, much less successful.

You won’t be able to plant your new ginkgos into the garden until the following spring after you take the material at the earliest, but it might even be another year after that.

So while the work starts in the spring or early summer, the propagation process takes a year or longer until planting time.

Plan accordingly. You’ll need a babysitter if you have any long trips planned.

In spring, before you start working, gather your supplies.

You’ll need pruners, a potting medium consisting of equal parts of sphagnum moss and vermiculite mixed together, a five-inch container for each cutting you wish to take, and powdered rooting hormone.

Clean your pruners well before you make any cuts. Wipe them down with a 10 percent bleach solution (one part bleach to nine parts water) or some isopropyl alcohol.

Set the cut ends in a glass of water as you work so the cuttings remain moist and alive.

When you’re ready to plant, stick your finger in the potting medium of your prepared pots to make a hole and dip the end of the cutting into the rooting hormone.

Poke it into the hole so it’s about two inches deep, and firm up the medium around it.

Set the cuttings in an area with bright, indirect light and keep the medium moist at all times. The medium should feel like a well-wrung-out sponge but not soaking wet.

Then, find a hobby or something to pass the next few months while you wait. Ginkgo cuttings aren’t exactly known for being fast.

By late fall, hopefully, you’ll see new buds swelling or maybe even some green growth on your cuttings. At any time, you can gently stick your finger down into the potting medium next to the cutting and lift it out carefully to check for roots.

By the following spring, any cutting that hasn’t developed roots should be tossed. Some might have lots of roots and others might only have the beginnings of a few. That’s fine, so long as new growth is happening, just be patient.

If your cuttings have plenty of root growth in the first spring after planting, feel free to move the new plants outside and transplant into the garden after hardening off.

Otherwise, keep them in an indoor spot that receives bright, direct sunlight for at least six hours per day until the following spring. Keep the medium moist at all times.

Regardless of when you decide to move the new trees outside, you’ll need to harden them off for a week before transplanting.

This involves taking the plants outside and setting them in the spot where you intend to plant them for one hour. Then bring them back in. The next day, add an hour before bringing them back in.

On the third day, leave them outside for three hours. Keep adding an hour each day until a week has passed. Now you can plant them in the ground.

Transplanting

At transplanting time, prepare the soil by working in some well-rotted compost and then dig a hole that is three times as wide and the same depth as the container the plant is currently growing in.

Remove the baby ginkgo from the container and gently loosen up the roots.

Set the plant in the hole and backfill with some of the removed soil. Water and add more soil if it settles to keep the young tree at the same depth it was in the growing container.